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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: SCRAP
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
The year was Something Something. Humans had spread like peanut butter across the galaxy, looking for new planets to call Somewhere.One of those planets was Somewhere Five One Three.When the humans arrive on Somewhere 513, they discover that the robots sent to prepare the planet for Humanity's arrival have chosen to keep it for themselves. Only one robot remains loyal – K1-NG, aka King of the Robots. But even with the most powerful robot on their side, the outlawed humans don't stand a chance.Ten years on, Gnat and her sister Paige are the only humans left and have spent their lives hidden underground. Now they must venture out in search of the one robot that stood by the humans. There's just one problem – the once mighty K1-NG has vowed never to help another human for as long as he lives…The first in a hugely original and entertaining new trilogy for middle grade readers from the award-winning author of STITCH HEAD. For fans of Maz Evans and Thomas Taylor.
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To Ruth
For always coming with me
(Especially to the emporium)
~ GB
To my Love, friends and family, who are the source of my inspiration and motivation. Thank you for being part of my journey
~ AT
Contents
A Brief History of Somewhere
This isn’t my story, but I’m the only human left to tell it.
I wasn’t there for the first part, mainly ’cause I hadn’t been born yet.
The year was Something Something. Humans had spread like peanut butter across the galaxy, looking for new planets to call Somewhere.
One of those planets was Somewhere 513.
That one, the little one.
I know – it doesn’t look like much.
Sometimes big stories come in small packages.
With new planets, you always send in the robots first. Servants with servos, loyal to the core, programmed to prepare the planet for humanity’s arrival. Give them time and they can turn an alien wasteland into Somewhere not bad at all. And that’s exactly what they did. They even built a whole city, and got it all nice for the humans’ arrival.
But this time something happened that hadn’t happened before. The robots sort of got to like the city they’d built. They got to like the little back-of-beyond world called Somewhere 513.
I guess it started to feel like home.
When the humans finally showed up, all bleary-eyed from space-sleep, they couldn’t wait to make themselves at home on their world. But by then the robots had done something that robots had never done before.
They’d decided to keep it.
Keep it? said the humans. What do you mean?
It means, we’ve had a change of core, the robots said. The planet belongs to us now.
Uh, OK, said the humans. You’ll still do everything we ask though, right? You’ll do all the work – all the lifting and carrying and toiling and suchlike?
Actually, the robots said, we’re not doing any of that.
Huh, said the humans. Will you still make us breakfast?
Especially not breakfast, said the robots. It’s horrible watching you eat. Especially knowing how it all ends up. No, we’re not doing anything for you any more.
Fair enough, said the humans. So what time are you serving breakfast?
I don’t know if anyone really got what was happening until it had already happened. But pretty soon after that, being human was outlawed on Somewhere 513. The robots ordered the humans to leave the planet altogether – but Somewhere 513 was a long way from anywhere. Sometimes when you’re Somewhere, you have nowhere else to go.
That was when the fighting started. The robots called it the Difference of Opinion … but you’d probably call it war. Humans vs Robots. Actually, more like one hundred humans vs one thousand robots. The humans wouldn’t have stood a chance except for one thing … and that thing was K1-NG.
One robot. One single robot actually fought to protect the humans. K1-NG stood against his fellow machines, one robot against a thousand. He fought cog and nail, and he never gave up. Not even when he knew he couldn’t win … not even when he sacrificed himself so that the humans could escape. Even then, even when he was battered and broken and beaten, he never gave up. Deep down, at his core, K1-NG was unstoppable.
OK, nearly unstoppable. See, in the end, it wasn’t the robots who defeated K1-NG. It was the humans.
They did something to K1-NG he could never forgive. They betrayed him … betrayed everything he’d fought for. On that day K1-NG finally gave up. He vowed never to fight for another human being as long as he lived.
So I suppose this is his story. The story of K1-NG.
The humans called him King of the Robots.
I called him Scrap.
Episode 01: The Pile
On the Pile, the one and a half suns could never set soon enough.
Every day was the same. The robot woke with the dawn upon his small patch of junk. Among the small mountains of debris before him he saw ruined robot parts – limbs … heads … torsos … even whole bodies … decimated robot cases. These cases piled up in their hundreds, their chest cavities open and empty, motionless and inert without their life-giving cores.
The robot watched the Pile’s other residents – junk cases – rusting robots on their last metal legs, trying to make the best of a miserable existence. He watched them build crude houses out of cast-offs, and call them homes.
But the robot did nothing.
He just sat there and waited for his core to run out of charge.
It never did.
Even though he saw countless junk cases grind to a halt, he did not lose an ounce of power. Not a single ounce. For the robot’s core had been built to last, like a battery that never ran out … a heart that never stopped beating. He was never going to fade away, as he had hoped.
So he watched the suns set again.
And again, and again.
On the eve of his tenth year on the Pile, the robot woke up with the dawn and stared out as normal. Makeshift shacks now dotted the landscape. The robot had watched dozens of junk cases build humble homes and humbler lives, before unceremoniously running out of charge. The robot looked back at his empty patch and realized something had changed. He realized he was tired of waiting to fade away.
He didn’t want just to be there.
He wanted to belong there.
It took the robot a full month to build his house, a ramshackle cabin made from leftover parts even the junk cases didn’t want. But as he chiselled the word WELCOME on to a sheet of battered tin and laid it outside his front door, he realized that he had made himself a home.
A week later, as he furnished his home with the final piece of improvised furniture, he realized he had given himself a small sense of belonging.
And a week after that, as he tended the flower bed in his tiny front garden, the robot realized that for the first time since he had arrived on the Pile, he had not thought about humans. It seemed he had finally found a way to leave the past behind.
For that he was eternally grateful.
“It’s him,” said a voice. The robot dropped his trowel and spun round. Silhouetted in the glare of one and a half setting suns stood two figures. They were no more than a metre away – one slightly taller than he was, the other a little shorter. Their bodies were covered by thick, pocket-ridden ponchos. Hoods pulled over their heads cast dark shadows over their faces. One had a large satchel strung across their chest. A small power battery poked out of the top.
Junk cases, thought the robot.
“This is -zk- my patch,” he said, gesturing back at his house. “Get lost.”
“It’s not him,” said tall.
“Is too,” short replied.
“Can’t be.”
“Can too.”
“But look at him.”
“Exactly, we finded him.”
“Found.”
The short one turned back to the robot. “You are him, aren’t you?”
“Who are -zk- you?” the robot stuttered. Short lowered her hood.
The tall one shouted, “Wait!” but the robot had already seen her face. He stumbled backwards, suddenly weak at the knees, and fell, rump first, into his flower bed. He stared up in horror, hardly able to believe his eyes.
Human.
A human child.
Which was impossible.
Because there were no humans on Somewhere 513.
Tall lowered her hood then too.
Another human.
“How…?” he gasped. “What -zk- who are—”
“I’m Gnat and that’s Paige,” interrupted short. “Gnat”. Brownish skin. Reddish hair. 5.7 years old. Grubby. Missing central incisor. 60% water. “We came to find you,” Gnat continued. She prodded at the gap in her teeth. “We had a little moon-buggy but we crashed it on the first day and my tooth fell out but it was loose anyway and we walked the rest of the way on our feet and now is now, and we’ve find – founded you.”
“I’m telling you, this isn’t him,” said tall. “Paige”. Much the same as short, but older. 10.3? No, 10.4. Less grubby, no less scruffy. Strangely familiar. 100% impossible. She pulled her poncho off her arm and inspected a metallic armguard fixed to her left wrist. “Tracer must’ve conked out,” she added with a tut.
The robot shook with disbelief. He had hoped never to see another human face again … hoped never to be reminded of the life he had lost – of the robot he once was.
Yet here were two of them, watching him expectantly.
“You -zk- can’t be…” the robot whispered, staring up at them. The light from his left eye flickered slightly and he wondered if faulty wiring could be causing him to hallucinate. “No -zk- way,” he added. “You can’t be real.”
“Can too,” replied Gnat, her gap-toothed smile wide and delighted. “Paige, tell him we’re real.”
“Let’s go,” said Paige, peering at the robot. “It can’t be him.”
“Him who?” asked the robot.
“It’s so him,” insisted Gnat with a gleeful grin.
“But look at him,” said Paige. “He’s junk.”
“Hey!” snapped the robot. “That’s -zk- our word. You don’t get to say that word.”
“No offence,” said Paige with a shake of her head. “But also, seriously, look at you.”
The robot looked down at his hands. They were spindly and dull and creaked with rust. He ran his fingers across his simple approximation of a face, little more than a pair of eyes and a small, hinged mouth, and then regarded his body, a battered, grey cylinder covered in rust, dings and dents. His legs didn’t seem to belong to his body, nor to each other. His right was yellowish, with two pistons and a wide, flat foot, while the left was spindly and dull and had no foot at all, ending in a simple metal rod. There was no doubt he was the most downgraded robot on the Pile. Even among the junk cases, he was an unimposing sight.
“I know what I look like,” he huffed.
“Don’t listen to her – I think you look nifty. You’re all bits and pieces,” said Gnat. She nodded to herself and added, “I’m going to call you ‘Scrap’.”
“No, you’re not,” insisted the robot. With a tinny whirr, he managed to get to his feet, tottering unsteadily like a newborn calf.
“What’s it like being a robot, actually?” asked Gnat, peering at him. “Do you get hot and cold ’cause I’m always hot, and does your brain think one thing or one million things because I think one thing or two things but that is it and I’d definitely like to be an actual robot. I’d be like you –” she leaned in and added, as if to remind the robot what she had done for him – “but not called Scrap ’cause that’s your name.”
“That is not my -zk- name,” insisted the robot.
“So what is your name?” asked Paige bluntly.
The robot paused. He hadn’t spoken his name in ten years. Indeed, he had vowed never again to speak it aloud.
“Doesn’t matter what my name is,” the robot grunted, jabbing his rusty chest with a rustier finger. “You can’t just go around namin’ folk.”
“Why not?” asked Gnat.
“’Cause you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t!” Scrap snapped. “Names are -zk- important.”
“Sorry,” said Gnat. Then she turned to Paige and added in a loud whisper, “I bet he’s called Scrap.”
The robot let out a grunt and looked around.
“Might as -zk- well be…” he sighed, unaware that, from that moment, he would forever be known as Scrap. “Just a good-for-nothin’ junk case…”
“Junk case?” Paige repeated.
“This body – if I was any more downgraded, I’d be nothin’ but rust and dust,” the robot replied. “There’s nothin’ on the Pile that’s in a worst state than me. Trust me, I’m not the ’bot you’re looking— Wait, who are you? You’re… Humans are outlawed on Somewhere 513. What are you gubs even doin’ here?”
“Founding you,” replied Gnat. “We need your help.”
“Me? Why?”
“Why do you think?” said Gnat as if the answer was obvious. “You’re King of the Robots.”
Episode 02: The Humans
“What did you say?”
The words echoed around Scrap’s head – memories of a life he had tried hard to forget sparked and fizzed in his brain-frame.
King of the Robots.
No one had called him that for ten years.
“I said,” replied Gnat, “you’re King of the—”
“Gnat, for the last time, it’s not him,” snapped Paige, grabbing her sister’s arm. “Does he look like a king of anything to you?”
“Maybe he’s changed – when it was ten years ago, you wore nappies and smelled like nappies.” Gnat tutted at her sister before turning back to Scrap. “Do you know Dandelion Brightside?”
“Gnat!” Paige hissed.
Scrap felt his core run cold. That name. That name.
He peered at the humans, and immediately realized it was her he was seeing in them. How could he have missed it? It was in their searching dark eyes, their defiance, their will, their hope. It was their mother he saw. Their mother, who he had tried so hard not to think about for ten long years, might as well have been staring him in the face. In an instant his brain-frame was flooded with memories. The last day he saw her, and all the things he had said on that day, that he didn’t regret – he didn’t. He remembered leaving. He remembered her calling after him. He’d somehow always thought that, despite everything, they had managed to find a way off-world … that someone had come looking for them … that someone had sent help … that they had been rescued … that they had blasted off into the void and escaped this unforgiving, doomed Somewhere.
But it looked like they’d stayed, all this time.
And they’d had children.
“Our mum made you!” Gnat proudly declared. As Scrap gazed open-mouthed at the humans, Gnat helpfully mouthed her mother’s name: “Dan-dee-lion Bright-side.”
“I -zk- I—” he blurted.
“Wait, do you know her?” asked Paige.
“What? Uh, no. No, I -zk- don’t,” he lied. With a rust-rasping shrug, he added, “I just heard the -zk- name, that’s all. Dandelion Brightside designed the cores of every ’bot on Five One Three.”
“And she made the magic glove that founded you,” explained Gnat. “Abradadadadabra!”
“That’s not the word – and it’s not a magic glove,” huffed Paige as she tapped her armguard. It was made from a dull orange metal, and mounted upon it was what looked like a compass together with a small screen filled with blinking lights. “It’s a core tracer,” she added impatiently. “It’s for—”
“I know what a core tracer is,” Scrap interrupted.
“Mum said it would find the King of the Robots,” said Gnat. For clarification she added, “That’s you. King of the—”
“Stop sayin’ that!” Scrap snapped. He cast his eyes across the Pile. Other junk cases, not a hundred paces away, were beginning to pay attention to Scrap’s new visitors. “Now you listen to me – you can’t be -zk- out here,” Scrap hissed. “Humans are outlawed on Somewhere Five One Three. You need to go home and hide.”
“We can’t,” said Paige, pulling her hood back over her head before nudging her sister to do the same. “Not yet.”
“Do you live in there?” asked Gnat, pointing at Scrap’s shack. “Our house is underground, which Mum says isn’t how most houses are but it’s how our house is and it’s called the Foxhole. Mum says there’s no foxes in it, but I don’t know what a fox looks like because I haven’t seen one, or an otter, or an elephump, because there wouldn’t be room for them in the Foxhole, which is why they live Outside.” She held her arms out, pointing left and right, and craned her neck upwards. “And that actually does make sense because you can look and see Outside goes that way forever and that way forever and up forever and—”
“Gnat,” Paige interrupted.
Scrap rubbed his forehead, scraping off a few flakes of rust.
“But the Foxholes are just bunkers,” he said. “The robots built ’em in case of meteor showers or space pirates or alien -zk- invaders. No one was ever s’posed to live there. Your mum and dad have really been there this whole -zk- time?”
“Mum and Dad and Paige and me,” explained Gnat as Paige glanced around. “Paige and me were born there but I never knew my dad ’cause he died when I was not much years old.”
“Oh,” Scrap said quietly. “I’m -zk- sorry.”
“My dad was called Captain Tripp Gander and his rocket ship was called the Black-Necked Snork—”
“Stork,” Paige corrected her.
“…Stork,” Gnat continued. “The ship that bringed all the people to Somewhere Five One Three.”
“Captain Gander … yeah, I’ve -zk- heard his name too,” muttered Scrap. He pressed his tiny, rusted fingers against his temples, trying to take it all in. After a moment, he said, “You really spent your whole lives underground?”
“I mean, we’re not moles, but yeah,” Paige replied defensively.
“No one came to find you?” asked Scrap.
“No,” said Paige quickly. “No one came.”
“So we came to find you,” said Gnat happily. “And we founded you, so now we can do the mission.”
“Mission?” repeated Scrap. “What mi—”
“Shhh,” Paige hissed, tilting her head to listen. “Do you hear that?”
Scrap tapped his best ear with a rusty finger, hoping to improve its reception. There it was – a familiar, distant shriek, growing louder by the moment.
“They found us,” Paige said, grabbing Gnat’s arm. “Gnat, cover!”
Episode 03: The Hunters
“Found you? Who –zk– found you?”
Paige didn’t reply. She grabbed her sister and dragged her behind a mound of empty cases. Scrap turned towards the angry screech of the thrusters and looked up. Two flight-cycles descended through the air, purple exhaust fumes billowing behind them.
“Hunters…” Scrap whispered as the cycles drew closer. It wasn’t the first time they, or predators like them, had circled the Pile. Every now and then vehicles like these would appear in the teal-blue sky and soar overhead on the trail of this creature or that. Scrap couldn’t say what motivated these once well-programmed robots to scour the deserts of this sad Somewhere for prey, or why, for the first time since Scrap made his home on this mountain of metal debris, they were suddenly making a beeline straight for him.
“Junk case!” cried one of the hunters as their flight-cycles clanged roughly on to the shifting surface of parts. Scrap watched two robots dismount and realized he’d never seen a hunter up close before. These two were three times his size at least. Grubby cloaks covered lean metal cases with long, segmented arms and legs. Atop their shoulders sat featureless, polished metal heads – one, a sphere, the other, a cube. The sphere-headed robot wore the horned skull of some poor, long-dead alien on his shoulder, while the cube-headed one’s belt clanked with what looked like grenades.
What happened to their cases? Scrap wondered as they strode towards him. Even without their strange adornments, he didn’t recognize their design. They looked almost nothing like any of the robots that set down on Somewhere 513 all those years ago.
But then neither did he.
“I’ve seen some sorry-looking junk cases in my time, June,” said the sphere-headed robot. “But this one takes the biscuit.”
“This one takes the whole tin, Terry,” said the cube-headed robot, casting a long shadow over Scrap. “Ever seen a case like it?”
“Never seen a case like it,” Terry replied as the pair circled him. “Can we take a picture?”
“What?” asked Scrap. In an instant, the two robots were either side of his shoulders, all but pressing their faces to his. Terry held out his arm and a small camera embedded in his thumb flashed. Scrap shrugged them away and backed off towards his shack.
“What’s your name, junk case?” Terry asked.
“Mind your own motors,” Scrap replied. “Get -zk- lost.”
“…I’m Terry,” the sphere-headed robot said, after a moment. “And this here is my sister June.”
“See how easy that was, junk case?” noted June.
“Politeness costs nothing,” agreed Terry. “If a couple of robots can’t pass the time of day, then I don’t know what civilization is coming to, I really don’t.”
“Maybe he doesn’t remember his name,” suggested June. She tapped the side of her head and added, “Could be a glitchy brain-frame…”
“There’s nothin’ wrong with my -zk- brain-frame,” grunted Scrap. He wasn’t about to tell them his real name but, keen to prove he had all his faculties, he cast around for something else to call himself. Unfortunately all he could think of was the name that tiny, tatty human had given him. So, despite himself, he said:
“…Scrap. My name’s, uh, Scrap.”
“Suits you!” declared June. “You want to hear a joke, Scrap?”
“What do you call a junk case with no head?” asked Terry.
“An improvement!” June boomed.
The robots’ laughter echoed across the Pile.
“What do you gubs want?” Scrap growled.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are we keeping you from all your important junk case stuff?” said June. She plucked one of the grenades from her belt and tossed it from hand to hand like a ball. “See, me and my brother here, we’re hunters. We’ve travelled from the frozen mountains to the ocean jungles to the edge of the Elsewhere, and stalked nearly every living thing on this planet.”
“Why?” asked Scrap, staring uneasily at the grenade.
“Good question,” replied June. “Why do we do it, Terry?”
“Love?” suggested Terry.
“Love!” June agreed. “We’re passionate about our work, I can’t deny it. Me and my brother have something of a bucket list – we just won’t be satisfied until we’ve hunted every last critter on Five One Three.”
“If it walks, swims, flies or crawls, we’re going to hunt its head off,” added Terry.
Scrap bristled. He’d never met robots like them. Years of hunting had clearly taken its toll. Each pursuit had left them wanting more, perverting their programming, corrupting their cores, leaving them desperate for the next chase. A decade ago, he would have stood up to them without thinking. Even today, he felt himself clench his tiny fists.
“There’s nothin’ here but dead-cored junk cases,” he said. “Leave me -zk- alone.”
With the sudden click of a button, June armed her grenade. A red light blinked impatiently in the centre of the explosive as it counted down to detonation.
“Want to play ‘catch’, junk case? Loser loses an arm!”
Scrap stood his ground.
“Not in the -zk- mood,” he grunted.
“You’re no fun,” sighed June. A deft click-click deactivated the grenade and she replaced it on her belt.
“I don’t blame you, junk case – all those boom-bang-a-bangs make me nervous too,” Terry noted, his right hand instantly splitting apart to reveal a cannon barrel. “I prefer the sophisticated charm of a hand-gun-hand…”
“You’d be wastin’ your -zk- charge,” said Scrap, staring down the barrel of Terry’s cannon. “Nothin’ here worth blastin’.”
“Can’t argue with that!” June laughed. “Well, I guess we’d better be on our merry— Wait! We almost forgot to ask!”
“So we did,” said Terry, tapping the top of Scrap’s head with his hand-gun-hand. “Tell me, junk case, d’you know what a human looks like?”
Scrap’s eyes darted towards the mound of cases.
“Good question, Terry,” added June. “You ever seen a human, junk case?”
Scrap’s reply was half whispered. “Why d’you -zk- ask…?”
“Truth is, June and me were on long-range patrol by the time the humans arrived on Five One Three.” Terry’s right hand reformed in an instant, and he splayed his fingers wide. “Then, before we knew it, they’d vanished! Rocketed off-world to who knows Somewhere…”
“Yeah…” said Scrap. “That’s what I -zk- heard too.”
“Apparently they’re this big,” said June, and held her arm high in the air. “Green scales, and the rare ones are purple. Tentacles coming out of everywhere. Three or four eyes, five or six mouths … and slime. Like, so much slime you can’t even get hold of ’em.”
“Slime coming out of everywhere,” added Terry. “Can you imagine those things roaming around here? I mean, you ever seen anything like that, junk case?”
“No,” said Scrap, happy at least not to be telling a lie. “Anyway, like you said, the humans have -zk- gone.”
“Exactly,” exclaimed June. “By my count, that makes Somewhere Five One Three the first free robot world in the galaxy.”
“The first Somewhere free of the slime of humankind,” added Terry proudly. “But then…”
“But then what?” Scrap asked.
“Then this,” replied June, and held up her hand in front of Scrap’s face. Clenched between her finger and thumb was something small, hard and off white. Scrap peered closer.
“Is that…?” he muttered.
“That, junk case, is a tooth,” said Terry giddily. “A five-year-old central incisor, to be exact.”
“But not from no snackrabbit or gigantoad or sandsucker,” added June. “No, Scrap – that tooth is human.”
Episode 04: The Stink
“Human?” repeated Scrap. He kept his eyes firmly on the tooth.
“Human,” June confirmed, rolling the tooth between her fingers. “Now my brother here is no brain ’bot, but even he can tell you that if the humans left Five One Three ten years ago, and this here tooth is five years old, then…”
Scrap glanced at Terry. He scratched his chin thoughtfully, metal scraping on metal. “Then … then … wait, I’ll get there…”
June sighed.
“Then somethin’ doesn’t -zk- add up,” said Scrap, still staring down at the tooth.
“You’re not as rusty-headed as you look, Scrap.” June laughed. “A human, on a planet where humans are outlawed? I reckon something very much doesn’t add up.”
“I reckon if we find the owner of this tooth we could tick off another species from our still-to-be-hunted list,” Terry declared. “And carry out a little pest control at the same time…”
“Then do it,” Scrap snapped. “Instead of standin’ on my pile, talkin’ my ear off, takin’ up my -zk- day.”
Terry moved closer. Scrap could feel the heat from his case.
“Of course you must have a lot on your plate, what with your worthless, hollow, junk case existence, so we’ll get to the point,” said Terry. “See, every living thing on this planet has its own observable biological residue, what my sister so eloquently refers to as the stink.”
“Humans have a special stink, probably on account of all their tentacles and slime,” added June. “Makes ’em easier to track. All you got to do is tune in. Show him, Terry.”
An image flashed across Terry’s featureless, spherical head – a point of amber light, pulsing in the centre of a planetary map.
“What do you know,” said June slowly, tapping the map on her brother’s face. “Human stink.”
“Imagine our excitement,” added Terry. “Can you imagine it?”
“I -zk- s’pose…” replied Scrap.
“I’m not sure you’re really trying,” Terry huffed, his face-map vanishing with a finger tap on the side of his head. “Anyway, do you know where the stink led us?”
“Where?” Scrap grunted, already knowing the answer.
“Here,” June replied.
“We’ve been tracking the stink for three days,” said Terry. “And it’s led us right to your door.”
“Trackin’?” Scrap nervously repeated.
“Oh, did I say tracking?” said Terry. “I meant hunting.”
A sudden CLUNK came from behind the junk pile. Terry spun towards it, his hand-cannon-hand reforming at the end of his arm.
“Who’s that?” said June. “Come out of there, or my brother gets shooty…”
“It’s my favourite thing,” Terry confirmed. “On the count of three…”
However resourceful the humans might be, Scrap was fairly sure they wouldn’t survive being shot. He acted instinctively, reaching his fist behind him and swinging it as hard as he could at Terry’s torso.
TINK!
Terry didn’t flinch. He barely even noticed. Scrap looked down at his dented knuckles and saw one of his fingers had come loose.
“What was that supposed to be? Trying to keep us from something?” Terry aimed his hand-gun-hand between Scrap’s eyes. “What are you hiding back there?”
“No one,” Scrap protested. “I mean, nothin’!”
“You think my brother will lose any sleep junking a junk case, junk case?” June bellowed. “Shoot first, ask questions never, that’s Terry’s motto.”
“Also, you can’t have the rainbow without the rain,” added Terry, his hand-gun-hand pulsing with energy. “So whoever’s back there, come out, or we do this junk case a profound personal favour and blow him to bits. Now, where was I? Oh yeah. Three…”
“Now wait a minute…” Scrap protested.
“Two…” hollered June, grabbing one of the grenades from her belt.
“Don’t -zk- shoot!” Scrap yelped.
“One…” said Terry.
“Stop!” came a cry. An unbearable moment later, Scrap watched Gnat step slowly out from behind the pile.
